The present disclosure relates to a monitoring and control system and method for a plant factory based on TV white spaces (TVWSs), and more particularly, to a monitoring and control system and method for a plant factory, which transmits and receives information to and from operating apparatuses installed inside and outside the plant factory through TVWS-based wireless communication.
Recently, crop growing methods using plant factories, in which environmental conditions such as temperature, light, CO2, culture media, and the like affecting growth of crops in the facility are controlled, work processes are automated, and crops can be continuously grown regardless of weather conditions, have been vitalized.
In the crop growing methods using plant factories, since it is important to appropriately maintain the environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, CO2, light, and the like and to quickly respond to changes in the environmental conditions, various plant factory monitoring and control systems for monitoring and controlling the environmental conditions in a plant factory have been used. Wireless local area networks (WLANs), ZigBee, and cellular communication methods based on 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands have been mainly applied to monitoring and control systems used in plant factories.
Although using WLANs and ZigBee communication methods without extra charge, among the communication methods applied to the conventional plant factory monitoring and control systems having advantages, the communication is possible in a relatively high frequency band, and thus the communication is possible in a relatively small range of a communication distance up to 30 m. The cellular communication method also continuously incurs costs during wireless communication with various operating apparatuses.
Therefore, there is a need to develop a plant factory monitoring and control system in which the communication within a wide range is possible using a lower frequency band than the wireless communication method based on the ISM bands and to which a reasonably priced wireless communication method is applied.